Nokia 8 Review: Android's New Champion Is Finland's Safest Smartphone

There’s a world where Finland’s Nokia never left the smartphone market, where it moved seamlessly from Symbian OS to Android, where the summer of 2017 saw the release of a flagship smartphone with the SnapDragon 835 system on chip, dual lens camera, and the latest version of Android to huge anticipation and critical acclaim.

This is not that world, much as many romantic dreamers may want it to be. Nokia’s decision to switch from Symbian to Windows Phone in 2011 fundamentally changed the industry. It gave Samsung a clear run at being the lead Android manufacturer, it allowed Apple space to claim the voice of the innovator in the space and it left Europe without a major player as the smartphone took over the world.

There’s always a balance needed with any new smartphone. How hard do you push in terms of innovation? How much do you invest in terms of new designs? Do you go for a safe and comfortable experience or do you risk something new that may not work? Given HMD Global’s corporate background, the Nokia 8 cannot afford to take too many risks.

Ewan Spence

HMD Global's Nokia 8 (image: Ewan Spence)

The first impression of the Nokia 8 is the physical design. Where the first wave of HMD handsets looked to be more boxlike and angular, the Nokia 8 picks up many of the design cues that are familiar from 2017’s leading handsets. That means a gentle curve across the back of the handset that is far more comfortable in the hand than the Nokia 6. The sides of the Nokia handset continues the curve up to meet the front of the handset, providing a lot of surface area for fingers and thumbs to grip. The Nokia 8 feels very secure in my hand.

Also familiar from the 2017 design book is the radio transparent material need for the cellular, bluetooth and Wi-Fi antennas. These can be seen along the top and bottom edges. On my ‘steel’ toned machine the color matching isn’t perfect so these do appear to stand out a little more compared to other palettes. When you are in flagship territory it can be the small details like the color gradients that can impact the purchasing the decision.

Ewan Spence

HMD Global's Nokia 8 (image: Ewan Spence)

Although the Nokia 8 has a modern curved feeling on the rear, the main display and front fascia feels less ambitious. There’s a tiny bit of sculpting at the edge of the glass so there’s a smooth transition to the curved edge of the handset, but the screen is resolutely flat with no curved edges or fancy designs. The QHD 2K resolution screen is a comfortable 5.3 inches on the diagonal, giving it a large but not excessive feel. There is a significant amount of bezel on display at the top and bottom the screen.

On the positive side that leaves space for a fingerprint sensor under the physical home key, along with the standard Android navigation controls either side of the home button under capacitive buttons outside of the screen real estate. It also leaves a lot of room for the cameras, so the forward and rear facing cameras can use the full depth of the device.

Ewan Spence

HMD Global's Nokia 8 (image: Ewan Spence)

Specifications wise the Nokia 8 delivers the high-end numbers that are expected from a late 2017 flagship. It comes with Qualcomm’s SnapDragon 835 and my review model has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. It has microSD card support to expand the storage, and everything motors along nicely. Switching between apps is smooth, and the focus placed on heat dissipation means that you’ll need to be doing some serious gaming or streaming before the Nokia 8 warms up in your hand. The heat is dissipated over as much of the surface as possible, so rather than hot spots there’s a general raised level of warmth that is not uncomfortable.

With a 3090 mAh battery the Nokia 8 is a little bit down on capacity compared to higher priced devices, so the modern smartphone target of aiming for a full day of work with a bit left over for the following day is achievable with careful use of apps (i.e. avoid playing your complicated 3D games if you need to get to 5pm). If you assume you’ll get a full day of use and you’ll be charging the device overnight you’ll be fine. It’s worth noting that the Nokia 8 does support QuickCharge 3.0 through the USB-C port, so topping it up at the office will not take long if you have thirty minutes to push some power in.

Ewan Spence

HMD Global's Nokia 8 (image: Ewan Spence)

For all of the Finnish design and heritage of the name, the Nokia 8 design brings in many modern touches but just feels like it falls short of excellence. There’s nothing wrong with the choices made, and there are logical reasons behind each of them, but the overall effect is a handset that is more focused on function than fashion. As you’ll see, that’s an ethos that runs through all of the Nokia 8 and HMD Global’s other handsets.

Ewan Spence

HMD Global's Nokia 8 (image: Ewan Spence)

That’s not the only echo of the old Nokia. HMD has revived the tradition of the awkwardly named feature trying to be hip. Presumably, the thinking went something like this… If you are taking a picture or video of yourself, that’s called a selfie… therefore if you are taking a video of two people using both cameras at the same time is a bothie.

Yes, it’s a cute feature on the phone, and yes it helps it stand out from the crowd, but I think it stands out now for all the wrong reasons. It sounds clunky, forced, and I’d argue is HMD Global’s first self-induced mis-step.

There is a use case for this feature, but it feels a pretty small one. Streaming two sides of a conversation, when both people are in the same room, and sending it to the likes of Facebook… that’s a pretty small group in relation to the prominence it was offered in the launch materials. It probably speaks more to the lack of genuine innovation in the entire smartphone world that the bothie was given a leading role.

Ewan Spence

HMD Global's Nokia 8 (image: Ewan Spence)

Perhaps more importantly for media capture on the Nokia 8 is the dual lens camera to the rear. The first lens is a 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilization. The second camera is also 13 megapixels, but is a monochrome camera and lacks the stabilization. This approach to dual lens allows for more information to be captured in an image, better low light capability and increased contrast. The artistic effects such as panoramic images and the bokeh style portrait effects are hiding in a submenu, along with manual controls so professionals can access increased fidelity.

The forward facing camera is also 13 megapixels, and matches the specifications of the rear color camera (without the stabilization though), again putting the emphasis on image quality.

Ewan Spence

HMD Global's Nokia 8 (image: Ewan Spence)

Low-level quality is above average but perhaps loses out very slightly to the likes of the Galaxy S8 and OnePlus 5 - much of this will be down to how the software combines the images from the two lenses at the rear so it’s going to be worth watching is there is any improvements in the quality of night-time images as software is updated through the life of the handset.

In use the Nokia 8 delivers the picture quality that you would expect from a flagship handset. Images are crisp, color reproduction is more natural than the over-saturated preferences of some handsets, and I’ve no real complaints about the resulting photos and videos.

Ewan Spence

HMD Global's Nokia 8 (image: Ewan Spence)

HMD Global has put a lot of effort into the message that the company is relying on ‘pure Android’ and Google’s stock version of the mobile operating system. The switched-on Android follower will recognize that stock Android does not have a ‘bothie’ mode or the options available to the camera. Therefore HMD Global is running a custom camera application as part of the package, as opposed to the out-of-the-box solution used by others. It’s an understandable (and required) move but it shows the limitations the rest of the Nokia 8’s software - there will be no surprises and there will be nothing challenging the expected norm.

What you get with the Nokia 8 is the Google-approved implementation of Android.

HMD Global

Nokia 8 (image: HMD Global)

The Nokia 8 speaks to the power of branding. I think that a lot of people are going to be looking for a new smartphone and land on the word ‘Nokia’ and feel incredibly comfortable because of the association with the past. Given the slightly cheaper OnePlus 5 is a close match specification wise to the Nokia 8, the premium of the name should offer confidence. There’s also Nokia’s association with being a good value for money choice, which means in comparison to the higher priced Samsung Galaxy S8 the Nokia 8 will also look attractive.

The biggest success of this handset is not in the use of stock Android, the promise of regular security updates, in having a curiously unique video streaming feature or respectable imaging software. It’s the fact that the handset can be called “Nokia 8”, and not "HMD 8". The latter would struggle to get a foothold in the market or capture the world’s imagination. The former means that many will at least consider this device as a purchase.

The Nokia 8 is competent without being stunning. Is that still what the market wants? I can’t answer that yet. What I can say is that the Nokia 8 is reliable, unfussy, and gets the job done…but it’s leaning very heavily on the Nokia brand name to sell an ultimately unambitious handset.